4 Ideas to Explore

1. The U.S. can pursue a grand strategy that is morally satisfying or that works, but not both, argues Council of Foreign Relations distinguished fellow Thomas Graham in The National Interest. According to Graham, two strategic approaches are available: “containment, the preferred option of much of the foreign-policy establishment, and competitive coexistence. The choice between them depends on how the United States assesses Russia.” “As during the Cold War, containment treats Russia as an implacable adversary with intolerable geopolitical ambitions in Europe and beyond. Echoing George Kennan’s logic, it assumes that thwarting Russian expansionist ambitions will eventually erode the foundations of the regime and yield a new Russia, a country more in tune with Western values and a potential partner for the United States,” according to Graham. By contrast, “a strategy of competitive coexistence… begins from the assumption that Russia is a permanent rival whose domestic system and strategic mindset the West cannot change through pressure or inducement. It sees the task of U.S. foreign policy not as defeating or transforming Russia but rather as managing competition responsibly to prevent direct military confrontation, which could prove catastrophic for both sides,” Graham writes. “In the end, the United States must choose between a policy of moral clarity and one that works. Competitive coexistence, for all its ambiguities and imperfections, offers the surer path to a Europe at peace and a global order that advances U.S. interests and values, if not as fully or as rapidly as some would hope,” Graham concludes.
2. “European countries now feel they’re directly in the firing line, without an adequate American shield,” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius writes. He cites European leaders’ warnings about a “clandestine” Russian campaign of sabotage and infiltration, and asks what the greater threat to U.S. national security is: “a mounting Russian threat against Europe” or “a noxious but relatively impotent network of drug gangs in Venezuela?” Ignatius also notes that U.S. cyber defenses and intelligence capacity have been gutted: U.S. Sen. Angus King says, “We are unilaterally disarming in the face of an escalating threat,” with “the staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency… cut from 3,300… to 2,200.” Ignatius concludes that Trump’s “mismatch of priorities” ignores the real security threat: “Trump wouldn’t be the first president to mask a retreat on a big problem by assaulting a smaller one,” but “when you look at the threat matrix around the world, it seems to me Trump has his priorities upside down.”
3. The use of energy as a weapon in international politics is back with a vengeance, argue Director of the Belfer Center Meghan O’Sullivan and co-author Jason Bordoff in their analysis of the political implications of global energy trade and consumption in Foreign Affairs magazine. O’Sullivan and Bordoff note that “following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia inflicted enormous economic pain on Europe by slashing its natural gas deliveries to the continent and sparking an energy crisis with global reverberations.” “When Russia cut off most of its pipeline gas exports to Europe in 2022… European countries were able to cushion the loss by securing supplies of globally traded LNG, albeit at much higher prices,” the authors write. “Nonetheless, shifting dynamics in global gas markets suggest that new dangers may lie ahead. In the coming years, supplies will be more concentrated among a handful of producers, even if Russia’s plan to triple its LNG export capacity by 2030 does not materialize,” O’Sullivan and Bordoff warn.
4. Vladimir Putin’s announcement of the successful tests of Russia’s nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable Burevestnik missile “constitutes his first serious nuclear saber rattling since Mr. Trump returned to office in January,” said Hanna Notte of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, according to The New York Times. Putin’s announcement Oct. 26 has not surprised analysts, but is still a cause for concern, NYT reports. According to Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College, Burevestnik is “a tiny flying Chernobyl… It is one more science fiction weapon that is going to be destabilizing and hard to address in arms control,” NYT reports. However, analysts do question the game-changing capability of the Burevestnik. “It’s not a terribly useful system,” said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst of Russian nuclear forces, according to NYT. Readers may recall that in 1957, the USSR launched a rudimentary satellite—the first manmade object in space—called Sputnik. Like Sputnik, Burevestnik’s real impact may be in stimulating a U.S. and allied arms race rather than actually shifting the balance of power between nuclear-capable rivals.*

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety:

• No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

• No significant developments.

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

• No significant developments.
• For military strikes on civilian targets see the next section.

Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

“Western drones are underwhelming on the Ukrainian battlefield,” The Economist, 10.23.25.

• The article reports that Western drones like the Switchblade-300 have “largely fallen flat” in Ukraine: “They were too expensive. They struggled against Russian electronic warfare. They caused minimal damage when they hit their targets.”
• Ukrainian developers now “outpace almost every country in the world,” focusing on rapid, cheap, disposable tech to match the “spam” tactics of mass drone use pioneered by both sides; “no more than 20-30%” of Ukraine’s battlefield drone tech is Western.
• “A clash of doctrines is at the heart of the issue.” While the West focuses on high-spec, low-volume hardware, Ukrainian innovation pursues “Skoda-style” drones: simple, effective, and cheap enough to be lost in large numbers—“It’s like choosing between BMWs and Skoda Octavias…a BMW…doesn’t help you if your task is to give everyone cars.”
• The most successful drones for Ukraine are built quickly from inexpensive materials, e.g., the Blyskavka—a reverse-engineered Russian design costing just $800 to carry 8kg of explosives over 40km.
• Western firms that have made a mark “established a significant early local presence: releasing systems for testing, and then iterating rapidly,” but most Western investment remains with firms “producing technology ill-suited to the challenges of Russia’s war.”
• The article concludes that Ukraine’s “Pandora’s box of cheap, ‘spam’ technology…threatens to overwhelm any military that is unprepared for it,” warning Western defense firms: “if you are not deeply involved in the war in Ukraine today, you are on the road to bankruptcy tomorrow.”

“The Crisis of Effective Contracts: Why the Kremlin's calculated balance of manpower did not become a formula for victory, and why this is unlikely to be rectified in 2026,” Re: Russia, 10.21.25.

• The report argues that Russia’s strategy to rapidly replenish frontline troops via lucrative contract bonuses is reaching exhaustion, as the price of attracting recruits has ballooned (75% increase over the past year, 30% in the last four months), posing a mounting burden on regional budgets already strained by declining revenue and rising deficits.
• Only wealthier regions can maintain high bonuses (now averaging over 2 million rubles in leading regions), and there’s evidence of publicized “temporary promotions” and quietly coordinated bonus cuts, shifting the cost burden and recruitment flow between regions—but the total system requires ever-escalating payouts to maintain recruitment levels.
• Despite these intensive efforts (averaging 35,000 new contract soldiers/month), Russian manpower advantages have not translated into battlefield breakthroughs, mostly due to effective Ukrainian drone defenses (“drone wall”) that inflict high Russian casualties and offset numerical superiority.
• With economic and fiscal constraints tightening, further increases in bonuses to recruit the 45,000 soldiers/month deemed necessary for a successful 2026 offensive seem unfeasible, prompting the Kremlin to consider politically riskier options like expanding conscription age, tightening draft compliance, mobilizing reservists, or a major one-off mass mobilization.
• The analysis concludes that the limits of the contract recruitment model have become clear: fiscal exhaustion and battlefield stalemate mean “cannon fodder” tactics cannot secure Russian victory, raising the prospect of further mobilization measures that will be deeply unpopular and economically destabilizing.

“Trump’s Russia Sanctions Shift War Dynamics to the Energy Front,” Constant Méheut, The New York Times, 10.25.25.

• “Far from the largely deadlocked front line on the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine are waging a fierce parallel war on each other’s energy assets that could do more to force them to the negotiating table than any flurry of international diplomacy,” the author writes.
• “[E]ach views its energy attacks, analysts say, as a strategic lever to break the stalemate in a conflict that has ground on for nearly four years and has so far been immune to the Trump administration’s peacemaking efforts,” the author writes.
• “‘In terms of both equipment and personnel, the key to Russia’s ability to rebuild combat power is money, which is overwhelmingly generated through the oil and gas sector,’ Jack Watling, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute,” according to the author.
• Meanwhile, for Ukraine, “[r]ecent attacks on gas facilities have knocked out roughly 60 percent of Ukraine’s gas production capacity as well as a number of compressor stations needed to pump gas that has already been stored, according to a European official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue,” the author writes.

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “Russia Unleashed More Than 5,000 Suicide Drones on Ukraine in September,” Stavros Atlamazoglou, The National Interest, 10.26.25.
• “The Kremlin’s blitz to make Ukraine ‘go dark,’” The Economist, 10.26.25.
• “As Putin Digs In, a Long—and Different—War With Ukraine Looms,” Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, 10.24.25.

Military aid to Ukraine: 

“Ukraine Needs a ‘Victory First’ Aid Strategy,” Anastassia Fedyk, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Ilona Sologoub, Project Syndicate, 10.23.25.

• “Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has received $145 billion in international financial assistance. While this support, generously provided by partner countries and other donors, has been immensely valuable, it has come with strings attached. The most significant restriction is that these funds can be used only for non-military purposes, such as health care, education, and public servants’ salaries,” the authors write.
• “Ukraine’s allies should be laser-focused on winning the war, which is the sole precondition for peace, Ukraine’s reconstruction, and European Union integration. This implies placing more emphasis on helping Ukraine repel Russian aggression than on designing security guarantees for ‘when the war stops’ or preparing a European defense plan to be ready by 2030,” the authors argue.
• “Various reports suggest that Ukraine uses only one-third of its drone-production capacity, owing to limited funding. With direct financial support from foreign donors, Ukraine could quickly increase its drone output, thereby blunting Russia’s assaults. It would also send the signal that Ukraine’s will to fight is backed by a robust financial lifeline from the West. These measures would make the war more costly for the Kremlin and may even motivate Russia to engage in genuine peace talks,” the authors write.
• “Foreign aid to Ukraine should reflect the reality on the ground. Above all, the country must protect its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Efforts to close funding gaps in areas other than defense – no matter how worthy – distract attention from this primary goal and create waste. Even with international support, Ukraine has far fewer resources than Russia. The efficiency of every penny must be maximized,” the authors conclude.

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “How Norway’s War Profiteering Could Help Ukraine,” Håvard Halland and Knut Anton Mork, Project Syndicate, 10.22.25.

Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:

“Ukraine Hits Back at Russia’s Economy,” David Kirichenko and Alexander J. Motyl, The National Interest, 10.23.25.

• “After years of insulation from the effects of Vladimir Putin’s war, Russia’s economy is finally starting to take a hit. … [O]nce President Trump flagged fuel lines and gas shortages, Moscow’s tightly controlled media—usually eager to hide failures—started running the story, writing, ‘it is no longer possible to deny the signs of petrol shortages in the regions,’” the authors write.
• “[O]ver the past year, Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries showcased Kyiv’s growing drone power, even as Moscow relied on waves of meatgrinder assaults for tiny territorial gains. By 2025, Russia had paid an estimated 200,000–300,000 killed and wounded for roughly 0.6 percent of Ukraine’s territory,” the authors write.
• “By late September, approximately 38 percent of Russia’s primary refining capacity had been impacted. More than 20 Russian regions face fuel shortages. On October 7, Reuters reported that Russia has ramped up gasoline imports from Belarus, surging fourfold in September to 49,000 tons, as Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries have deepened the shortages and forced Moscow to look abroad for emergency supplies,” the authors write. “Russia’s oil output is also falling as sanctions, war, and aging fields bite, and The Wall Street Journal warns most reserves may be costly and hard to extract by 2030—threatening the revenues that fund the Kremlin’s war economy,” the authors write.
• “What impact will these trends have on Putin’s ability to wage war? [Economist Igor] Lipsits believes that ‘as long as Russia can export oil, it will be able to continue the war.’ [Economist Vladimir] Milov believes that ‘Putin can’t afford a large offensive’ and will continue doing what he is already doing: bombing Ukraine with cheap drones and pursuing limited drives in only several directions,” the authors write.
• “This suggests that economic pain alone may not be enough to compel Moscow to the negotiating table. On the other hand, there is pain and there is collapse. If Lipsits’s and Milov’s worst-case scenarios come true, as they think they will, there may not be much of Russia left to go to the negotiating table,” the authors conclude.

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “Sanctions split,” Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 10.22.25.

For sanctions on the energy sector, please see section “Energy exports from CIS” below.

Ukraine-related negotiations: 

“Will Trump’s Russia Oil Sanctions Finally Sway Putin?” Keith Johnson, Foreign Policy, 10.23.25

• Johnson notes Trump’s new sanctions blacklisting “Russia’s two largest oil companies—Rosneft and Lukoil—and most of their subsidiaries… have already spooked both of Russia’s main customers. Refiners in India and China said they would begin cutting oil trade with Russia in the wake of the U.S. sanctions.”
• “These sanctions touch all Russian crude oil, by pipeline and by sea. Basically, all those companies that interact with Rosneft and Lukoil might be exposed” to secondary U.S. sanctions, which Johnson emphasizes is “a big deal,” as it weaponizes the global reach of the U.S. dollar and Treasury.
• While China and India have ways to keep some imports flowing—“it’s unlikely that the volumes that Russia needs to export could pull off the same evasions tricks that Iran has managed to the same degree”—large parts of the Russian export market are now “drying up.”
• The energy squeeze is intensified by “fresh rounds of sanctions from the European Union… and the United Kingdom,” Ukraine’s stepped-up strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, and a global oil glut that makes it easier for the U.S. to act without risking price spikes at home.
• Russia’s fossil fuel earnings are already “half of what it was earning at the high point of late 2022”; three remaining outlets—oil sales to China and India, oil product sales to Turkey, and gas to Europe—“are targeted by the latest cocktail of U.S. and European sanctions.”
• Johnson concludes the pressure is immense but not necessarily decisive: “It has suffered at least 1 million casualties for little territorial gain… What level of economic pressure on a subset of Russian state revenues will be enough to revolutionize Putin’s worldview?”

“New US sanctions on Russia provide a lifeline for Ukraine,” Editorial Board, The Boston Globe, 10.24.25. 

• The Globe editorial calls Trump’s new oil sanctions “a new and important milestone in the nearly four-year-old war,” noting that punishing Rosneft and Lukoil “depends on US follow-through,” especially secondary sanctions on countries like India and China continuing to buy Russian oil.
• While oil prices spiked and Indian refiners pledged to follow new rules, the editorial cautions that “evading restrictions has become a way of life for Russian tankers and bankers, and the current sanctions will be no different unless the United States remains vigilant in enforcing these most recent rules.”
• The EU simultaneously targeted Russia’s “shadow fleet” of illicit tankers, broadening the pressure on Russia’s oil exports.
• The editorial argues, “wars are not halted by sanctions alone,” emphasizing Ukraine’s urgent needs for advanced weapons—specifically, US-made Tomahawk missiles, which Trump refused to provide, though he lifted restrictions on British Storm Shadows.
• Trump denied the US role in Storm Shadow use, but as the Globe notes, “the missiles do use US targeting data—a nicety the president has wisely decided to overlook.”
• Concluding, the editorial declares, “Whatever the United States can do to bring the war to Putin’s doorstep—with sanctions and the easing of needless limitations on Ukraine’s ability to fight its own battles—is the only way to bring a ruthless tyrant to the bargaining table.”

“Now it's obvious what works on Putin,” Editorial Board, Washington Post, 10.22.25.

• The editorial argues that the collapse of the planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest, prompted by Russia’s refusal to freeze the conflict at current battle lines, exposes Moscow’s unwillingness to accept Ukrainian sovereignty or meaningful security guarantees for Kyiv.
• The authors highlight that US-supplied intelligence is enabling Ukraine to strike Russian energy infrastructure, hurting Moscow at a time of low oil prices and raising Russian anxiety—especially after Trump raised (then dropped) the prospect of providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
• Ukrainian President Zelensky suggests that Russia’s interest in diplomacy waned when long-range missile supplies became less likely, claiming “the greater Ukraine’s long-range capabilities, the greater Russia’s willingness to end the war.”
• According to the editorial, Russia’s military advances have stalled, and sustained Western pressure—via sanctions and possible missile deliveries—is the one factor that pushes the Kremlin toward compromise.
• The piece concludes that, while some form of territorial compromise and security guarantees is the likely endgame, increasing pressure on Russia is essential to force Moscow to negotiate seriously. 

“Tips for Trump on Russia (from an ex-oligarch once jailed by Putin),” Paul Schemm and Catherine Belton, Washington Post, 10.24.25.

• If President Donald Trump wants to make progress in negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he needs to put Tomahawk missiles back on the table for Ukraine instead of just fiddling with sanctions, according to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a major Russian opposition figure with deep knowledge of the Kremlin.
• Trump, who campaigned for president claiming he could end Russia’s war in Ukraine in just 24 hours, has embarked on a dramatically different approach to dealing with Putin than his predecessors in the White House who sought to isolate or sideline the Russian leader. Trump invited Putin to a summit in Alaska, speaks with him regularly and often talks about the prospects of lucrative bilateral trade.
• In recent days though, relations between the men seem to have soured. Expressing frustration with Putin over Ukraine, the Trump administration briefly contemplated supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles and then scrapped a planned summit in Budapest and imposed U.S. sanctions on the oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.
• The key to dealing with Russia is understanding Putin and his paramount role in the country, Khodorkovsky said, explaining that the Russian leader is the main driver of the war—in contrast to the elites around him or the generals—and has a paranoid outlook. The only way of putting pressure on Putin is to threaten force, Khodorkovsky said.
• “You are actually dealing with a thug,” he said. “Mentally this person has got used to living in the world where there is no rule of law, no law,” he continued, referring to Putin’s background in Russia’s intelligence services.
• “He has worked in all these organizations where force was the only language,” he added. “So you can’t just go and say to them, ‘I’m going to make you a really good offer.’”
• He said what made Trump’s talk of cruise missiles so effective is that Putin took it personally. “What you have to do is create psychological problems for him,” he said, suggesting that the West create issues that require his personal attention. “Let him … spread himself thin.”

“Europe needs its own channels to the Kremlin,” Alexander Gabuev, Financial Times, 10.20.25. 

• Gabuev argues that Europe lacks discreet, direct crisis communication channels with Russia—an omission that is increasingly risky as the chance of NATO-Russia miscalculation rises and the US under Trump keeps Europeans in the dark about contacts with the Kremlin.
• He notes that, unlike Europe, Kyiv still maintains lines to Moscow via third parties, and the US previously ensured communication for conflict diplomacy, but such channels at the senior level have since vanished for Europe.
• The article warns that Russian hybrid attacks—including drone incursions—are meant to pressure Europe and could easily escalate, especially as the Kremlin grows more risk-tolerant and unpredictable.
• Gabuev advises Europe to urgently establish regularized, principled channels for risk management with Moscow, despite political divisions, to guard against dangerous miscalculations and escalation.

“Trump’s Peacemaking Is as Lethal for Ukraine as Ever,” Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 10.20.25.

• “There’s every reason to believe leaked accounts that a shouting match erupted between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy when they met in Washington last week. … The US president appears to be back on board with helping Russia browbeat Ukraine into accepting a deal that would hand Vladimir Putin territory he’s been trying to conquer since 2014,” Champion writes.
• “At issue is about 30% of Donetsk province, which adds up to about 8,000 square kilometers, or just over 3,000 square miles, of territory,” the author explains.
• “First, in the context of this war, that’s a lot of land. According to Harvard University’s Belfer Center, which keeps count, Russia currently occupies about 19% of Ukraine, or 45,109 square miles. Of that total, Moscow has gained 4,484 square miles since it stemmed losses to Ukrainian counteroffensives in November 2022. In other words, Putin is asking to be gifted almost two thirds as much territory as he’s been able to take in three years of fighting, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded troops,” Champion writes.
• “Even that’s not the worst aspect of this potential deal, which Putin has formulated to be either unacceptable or an instrument of national suicide. If Zelenskiy were to agree, the perceived betrayal of Ukrainians who fought and died to hold these cities and all they protect, while abandoning their populations to brutal occupation, would tear the country apart from within,” he argues.
• “Trump has flip-flopped on Ukraine more than once, but his preference for a bilateral deal with Moscow made at the cost of Kyiv and Europe remains a constant,” according to the author.

“A Ukraine Peace Deal Must Include Three Guarantees,” James Stavridis, Bloomberg, 10.23.25.

• “Only if Kyiv has a true sense of security can there be a legitimate settlement along the current front lines of the war. The West should be thinking ahead about mandatory bargaining positions that would safeguard Ukraine permanently,” according to Stavridis.
• “There is precedent here: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its Western allies provided such guarantees to the small Balkan region of Kosovo in the late 1990s against Serbian aggression,” he writes.
• “It makes sense to think in terms of three domains of warfare: sea, air and land,” he writes.
• “Ukraine must have assurances that the Russian Black Sea fleet will not try to bottle up its commerce, especially the export of agrarian products and potash.”
• “In the air, there is both an offensive and defensive aspect to any security guarantee. The most important defensive feature would be establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine’s remaining territory, enforced by NATO jets and Ukrainian air forces,” Stavridis argues. “The offensive air component would be the addition of long-range cruise missiles such as the Tomahawks, with their 1,500-mile striking ability.”
• “The security guarantees for land would need more political nuance than the other dimensions. Moscow will adamantly oppose a NATO combat mission in Ukraine, but the presence of at least 10,000 troops from NATO member-states operating under their national flags — a coalition of the willing — could be necessary,” according to the author. “Another part of the land-security assurances would be Kyiv getting permanent access to ground-warfare systems from Western supporters, including ammunition, artillery, tanks, mines and other basics of land combat.”
• “Finally, in today’s highly contested electronic domain, Ukraine will need protection from Russian cyberattacks,” he writes.

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “Sanctions or Tomahawks? Only Credible Threats Will Convince Putin,” Marc Champion, Bloomberg, 10.23.25.
• “As long as there is an imperial regime in Moscow, there can be no neutral Ukraine,” Alexey Kopytko, The Moscow Times, 10.27.25. Clues from Russian Views (In Russian.)
• “Trump and Ukraine: tracking the US president’s shifting signals,” Christopher Miller, Amy Mackinnon, Alan Smith and Aine Quinn, Financial Times, 10.24.25. (Infographic.)

Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

“Drawing a Line in the Sky,” Michael Williams, Foreign Policy, 10.22.25, 

• Williams notes that Russian airspace violations—“what was once considered rare and brief has become routine and increasingly prolonged”—have included MiG-31 jet intrusions over Estonia and “19 Russian drones [that] penetrated Polish airspace” in September, exposing major gaps in NATO air defense and alliance credibility.
• He warns of “a very real credibility problem for the alliance that sows division,” as “the gap between rhetoric and action widens, and the Kremlin takes note,” with internal NATO debates revealing a split between eastern members demanding forceful action and western members urging restraint.
• Questions are raised by frontline states: “Do some territorial violations matter more than others? Is there an acceptable threshold of sovereignty infringement?” NATO’s lack of “clear, enforceable red lines” leaves Russia “to wonder: What exactly are the consequences of the next incursion?”
• Technical failings compound the issue: “NATO’s internal calculations show the alliance has around 5 percent of the capability necessary to defend allied airspace,” especially against low-altitude drone swarms, and “using multimillion-dollar weapons systems…against drones costing thousands of dollars is unsustainable.”
• Williams advocates “clear, pre-established public rules of engagement for airspace violations that empower the SACEUR to defend the alliance,” especially “shooting down armed crewed aircraft” when warranted, to “shift the burden of responsibility to Russia, away from NATO,” and to avoid “potentially unilateral action by a country such as Poland.”
• Finally, he urges urgent investment in “layered air defense systems, improved radar coverage, and integrated command and control,” along with a “standing response mechanism for airspace violations” that would enable pre-authorized, graduated responses and help preserve the unity, credibility, and technical capability NATO needs to deter Russia.

“Russia: Containment or Competitive Coexistence?” Thomas Graham, The National Interest, 10.26.25.

• “[I]t is not premature to consider how such a settlement should be framed to advance US interests in European security and in relations with Russia. Broadly speaking, two strategic approaches are available: containment, the preferred option of much of the foreign-policy establishment, and competitive coexistence. The choice between them depends on how the United States assesses Russia,” writes Graham.
• “As during the Cold War, containment treats Russia as an implacable adversary with intolerable geopolitical ambitions in Europe and beyond. Echoing George Kennan’s logic, it assumes that thwarting Russian expansionist ambitions will eventually erode the foundations of the regime and yield a new Russia, a country more in tune with Western values and a potential partner for the United States,” according to Graham.
• “A strategy of competitive coexistence, by contrast, begins from the assumption that Russia is a permanent rival whose domestic system and strategic mindset the West cannot change through pressure or inducement. It sees the task of US foreign policy not as defeating or transforming Russia but rather as managing competition responsibly to prevent direct military confrontation, which could prove catastrophic for both sides,” he writes.
• “Containment and competitive coexistence share the goal of preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty and preventing further Russian aggression against its neighbors. Where they diverge is in their understanding of how to address the two central issues of this conflict: security guarantees for Ukraine and the disposition of disputed territory,” according to Graham.
• “In the end, the United States must choose between a policy of moral clarity and one that works. Competitive coexistence, for all its ambiguities and imperfections, offers the surer path to a Europe at peace and a global order that advances US interests and values, if not as fully or as rapidly as some would hope,” Graham concludes.

“Trump is ignoring the real threat matrix,” David Ignatius, Washington Post, 10.23.25.

• Ignatius writes that Trump’s national security focus has “shift[ed]…away from a mounting Russian threat against Europe and toward a noxious but relatively impotent network of drug gangs in Venezuela,” describing this as a “misallocation of priorities…evident across the Trump administration,” including purges of experienced FBI and CIA officers, slashed cyber budgets, and weakened Western intelligence alliances.
• He cites European leaders’ warnings about a “clandestine” Russian campaign of sabotage and infiltration, and notes, “European countries now feel they’re directly in the firing line, without an adequate American shield.”
• Cyber defenses and intelligence capacity have been gutted: Sen. Angus King says, “We are unilaterally disarming in the face of an escalating threat,” with “the staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency…cut from 3,300…to 2,200.”
• Allied confidence is being eroded by politicization, Dutch intelligence chiefs admitted, “We sometimes don’t tell things anymore, that is true…We are very alert to the politicization of intelligence and to human rights violations,” and even Five Eyes partners are moderating intelligence sharing.
• On Venezuela, Ignatius quotes veteran CIA officer Jack Devine: “Don’t do covert action without congressional support and a strong indigenous force. If you go in, do it hard. Don’t dabble. Otherwise, you’re opening Pandora’s box.”
• Ignatius concludes that Trump’s “mismatch of priorities” ignores the real security threat: “Trump wouldn’t be the first president to mask a retreat on a big problem by assaulting a smaller one,” but “when you look at the threat matrix around the world, it seems to me Trump has his priorities upside down.”

“The CRINK: Inside the New Bloc Supporting Russia’s War against Ukraine,” Angela Stent, Atlantic Council, 10.23.25.

• “Russia’s war against Ukraine has brought it a new set of partners. While this group is sometimes referred to as an axis, in reality it is a set of intensifying bilateral ties with countries—China, Iran and North Korea—that are essential for Russia’s continued prosecution of the war. The presence of these countries’ leaders at the military parade in Beijing … suggests that these countries increasingly constitute an anti-U.S. bloc, united not by shared values but by shared grievances,” according to Stent.
• “These three authoritarian states are essential allies not only in the war on Ukraine, but also in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan for a ‘post-West’ global order. In Putin’s vision, this would be a multipolar world in which the United States has lost its ‘hegemonic’ role and is only one of several great powers setting the global agenda,” Stent writes.
• “Responding to the dangers these countries represent will be difficult and costly. … Driving wedges between them— particularly between Russia and China—is unlikely to work in the short term. The inherent tensions between all of them might eventually lead to a fraying of their ties, but that is unlikely to happen for the duration of the Russian war and its immediate aftermath,” according to Stent.
  • “The first Western goal should be to seek to contain the ambitions of all four countries.”
  • “The second goal should be to contain Russia more effectively than has been the case since the Soviet collapse.”
• “While the CRINK appears to be emerging as a more coherent bloc, many tensions continue to exist among all four countries. The United States should devise a consistent, targeted strategy of seeking to exploit the points of tension between the countries, however difficult that is. It should also seek to deter further aggression by Russia, alone or in concert with its CRINK partners, and strengthen its own defenses against future military challenges by these countries,” Stent concludes.

“The New Eurasian Order: America Must Link Its Atlantic and Pacific Strategies,” Julianne Smith and Lindsey Ford, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2025.

• “The United States’ adversaries are coordinating with one another in unprecedented ways, creating a more unified theater of competition in Eurasia. In response, U.S. allies are coalescing. … Today, however, the United States appears to be dispensing with a transregional approach to great-power competition,” the authors write.
• “China and Russia are collaborating in ways that the United States is not prepared for. The two countries are leveraging their relationship and also their respective partnerships with North Korea and Iran to cause trouble,” the authors argue. “In Asia and Europe, Beijing and Moscow are using ‘gray zone’ operations to bully U.S. allies, weaken their militaries, and call into question the unity and capability of democratic groups such as the EU, the G-7, and NATO.”
• “China and Russia are also integrating their capabilities in ways that will shape future wars. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s years-long bombardment of Ukraine would not have been possible without access to Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean weapons, technologies, and personnel,” the authors write.
• “On its own, the United States cannot manage Chinese-Russian alignment. But neither can Washington ignore any conflict in Eurasia that comes from it. American allies are rapidly transforming their relationships whether Washington likes it or not; these networks can either serve or undermine U.S. interests depending on how Washington engages with them. If the United States fails to reset ties with Asian and European partners, it risks being left on the sidelines of a rapidly changing world order,” the authors conclude.

“A Frog in a Pot – Turning Around Russia’s Hybrid War,” Eerik Kross and Greg Mills, RUSI, 10.22.25.

• Kross and Mills describe Russia as “a main protagonist in a new pattern of conflict, defined by the term ‘hybrid warfare’, a format which allows the Kremlin to overcome its power asymmetry to destabilize Europe, build alliances worldwide, including in Africa, and pursue its imperial ambitions in Ukraine by undermining support for Kyiv.”
• The piece warns: “Western countries must wake up to the increase in temperature of Russian provocation,” likening it to the slow-boiling frog: “The frog is heated slowly enough as not to risk it hopping out of the pot.”
• They summarize hybrid warfare as “a spectrum of hostile actions below the threshold triggering a military response, from political interference at one end, to cyberattacks, assassination and non-conventional conflict … at the other.” This strategy “blends traditional and irregular tactics, uses of state and non-state actors, espionage, money laundering, sabotage and undermining industrial capacity, and usually relies on information and cyber warfare more than kinetic operations.”
• The authors link this directly to earlier Soviet and Russian behavior, noting that “well before Vladimir Putin’s time, this included deception, subversion, disinformation, psychological warfare and the funding of domestic actors elsewhere with the aim of sowing and exploiting divisions among Western societies.”
• They call for action: “First, call this a form of warfare. The use of terms such as ‘hybrid war’ or ‘grey zone’ is misleading; these should rather be labelled subversion, sabotage, lawfare, terrorism, assassinations, murder, illegal incursions by air, sea and land and cyber or political warfare.”
• “Do not only acknowledge, assess and attribute [cyberattacks], but act. … The West’s goal must be not just to become more resilient but to prevent these actions. Being specific about the diagnosis will enable a clear understanding of the problem and the solutions.”
• On supporting democracy: “Transparency helps. Corruption and authoritarianism thrive in the dark. Muddy waters are to the liking of malevolent foreign agents just as publicity is the best antidote. Funding a free press is probably the best investment that philanthropists and businesses intent on positive change can make.”
• Political oppositions need to organize and ask: “‘How do we increase our leverage over the regime?’ … There is a need however, to routinely discount the likelihood of salvation from outside. Outside actors, for their part, must adopt the old credo: First, do no harm. … Unity among democrats is key and depends on leadership and organization.”
• The bottom line: “To confront hybrid war, the bottom line is to do to Russia the same things that they are doing to others, only better, operating also under the threshold of international aggression, dragging them down on multiple fronts, soaking up energy, bandwidth and resources. The fear of not upsetting the Russians and other authoritarians is one of the biggest security weaknesses under which liberal democracies currently suffer.”

“How to Fight Putin on the Information Battlefield,” Peter Pomerantsev and Sviatoslav Hnizdovskyi, Foreign Policy, 10.23.25.

• “To make Putin worried enough to consider a cease-fire more seriously, we must act in the informational—or, as it is trendy to call it in security circles, the ‘cognitive’—domain,” the authors argue, highlighting NATO’s movement toward “cognitive warfare” that targets “attitudes and behaviours by influencing, protecting, and/or disrupting individual and group cognitions to gain an advantage.”
• Pomerantsev and Hnizdovskyi write that “Putin and his generation of rulers are obsessed with maintaining the perception that they can control the domestic situation,” and that “one of the few things that will get them to consider their belligerent foreign policy is the fear that their domestic control could slip.”
• They suggest information campaigns should focus on issues such as “the presence of criminals in the army, worries about families being paid compensation in case of soldiers’ deaths, the hit taken to social services due to the amounts being spent on the war,” as these topics resonate far more than depictions of battlefield losses or civilian suffering.
• The authors urge the West to “increase pressure from many vectors”—sanctions, military, and especially information operations—at moments of exogenous shock like Ukrainian incursions: “A Kremlin threatened on multiple fronts will take the risks of the war more seriously—and perhaps be deterred from future aggression.”
• Instead of mirroring Russian disinformation, “facts and the repressed truth are potent on their own”; the key is to reach Russians where they are, using granular details and showing mastery of local reality: “The task for the West is not to hide the origin of its content but to impress how detailed its understanding is of what really goes on inside the Russian system while minimizing risk for audiences.”
• “Cognitive deterrence” requires broad collaboration: “The very act of collaborating across countries and sectors is integral ... it shows Putin that we are united and ready to take the game to his greatest vulnerabilities”—calling for a “flotilla of new communication initiatives” that combine private sector innovation, technological breakthroughs, and civil society agility to pierce Russian information control.

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “Bringing in the Balkans If the EU doesn’t woo the Western Balkans, Russia or China might,” Amer Kapetanovic, The Economist, 10.22.25.
• “Europe Never Recovered From the Fall of the Berlin Wall,” David Marsh, Bloomberg, 10.24.25.
• “Violations of NATO airspace: How to restore deterrence,” Matus Halas, European Leadership Network, 10.22.25.
• “Losing the Swing States: Washington Is Driving the BRICS to Become an Anti-American Bloc,” Richard Fontaine and Gibbs McKinley, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2025.
• “Review: It’s (Still) Henry Kissinger’s World,” Julian E. Zelizer, Foreign Policy, 10.24.25.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

See this link for notable commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “China and Russia: who can do without whom?” Sergey Shelin, The Moscow Times, 10.24.25. Clues from Russian Views (In Russian.)

Missile defense:

“Does the Golden Dome Create Strategic Instability or an Opportunity with China and Russia?” Clayton Swope and Melissa Dalton, CSIS, 10.23.25.

• “Beijing has asserted the initiative will weaken ‘global strategic balance and stability,’ as well as turn ‘space into a war zone,’ and Moscow has called it a ‘very destabilizing initiative’ that would ‘[undermine] strategic stability at its core,’” the authors write.
• “While it is hard to imagine Beijing or Moscow deciding to launch a massive nuclear first strike in response to the decision to build the Golden Dome, China and Russia may try to develop weapons to counter the missile shield to improve the security of their second-strike capability,” the authors argue.
• “The Golden Dome should prompt opportunities to update and reinitiate arms control discussions or reframe and extend existing agreements with Russia to match today’s strategic and geopolitical realities. There may also be a chance to develop a new dialogue with Russia and China on building crisis management mechanisms, like those developed between U.S. and Soviet leaders during the Cold War, or start new dialogues that aim to develop an agreed-upon definition and approach for strategic stability,” the authors suggest.
• “[S]trengthening missile defenses would give the United States an edge and help protect it from increasing missile threats. It might deter China or Russia from taking some hostile act against the United States or its allies, possibly preventing war,” the authors conclude.

Nuclear arms:

“Beyond New START: What Happens Next in Nuclear Arms Control?” Amy Woolf, RUSI, 10.21.25.

• Woolf notes that the New START treaty—the last binding limit on US and Russian nuclear arsenals—will expire in February 2026, ending decades of arms-control agreements and raising the risk of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.
• She explains that, while a new formal treaty is unlikely before expiry, the US and Russia might still voluntarily observe New START’s force limits and possibly share some data after 2026—to maintain transparency, predictability, and restraint during any future talks.
• The author highlights changing security dynamics: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and history of noncompliance undermines trust, while China’s expanding nuclear capabilities raise the question of whether to include China in future arms-control frameworks or prompt US arsenal growth.
• Competing perspectives exist in the US: Some view arms control as needlessly constraining, especially given Chinese and Russian threats; others argue it remains vital for stability and risk reduction, and that including China could broaden the benefits.
• Woolf outlines a “two-track” proposal for future risk reduction: (1) High-level US, Russian, and Chinese summits to reaffirm shared principles against nuclear war; (2) Expert working groups to negotiate risk-reduction tools such as hotlines, accident-avoidance measures, and launch notifications—a step toward future agreements and a way to keep engagement alive despite the end of formal treaties.

“Putin Says Russia Now Has Nuclear-Powered Missile,” Valerie Hopkins, The New York Times, 10.26.25.

• “Russia has successfully tested its nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable Burevestnik missile and is preparing to deploy it, President Vladimir V. Putin said Sunday, a pointed message to the West after plans for a summit with President Trump collapsed,” Hopkins reports.
• “Mr. Putin, dressed in a military uniform, listened as Mr. Gerasimov announced that the test had taken place on Tuesday, and that the missile had remained in flight for 15 hours and flown 8,700 miles,” according to Hopkins.
• “The weapon has been in the works for many years, and analysts say its successful test does not come as a surprise. Still, it is cause for concern, according to Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College. ‘It is a tiny flying Chernobyl,’ he said … ‘It is one more science fiction weapon that is going to be destabilizing and hard to address in arms control,’” Hopkins reports.
• “Mr. Putin’s announcement constitutes his first serious nuclear saber rattling since Mr. Trump returned to office in January, said Hanna Notte of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies,” according to Hopkins. “This move, she said, was aimed more at Washington.”
• “Analysts question the game-changing capability of the Burevestnik. ‘It’s not a terribly useful system,’ said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst of Russian nuclear forces. It is ostensibly intended to respond to a U.S. nuclear attack, but such a strike would target the Burevestnik launching pads, he said,” Hopkins reports.
• “Even so, Mr. Lewis said, it is a disconcerting development for global security. ‘This is what an arms race looks like,’ he said,” Hopkins concludes.

“Ryabkov on the problems in dialogue with the US and the threat of a clash between nuclear states,” Kommersant, 10.22.25. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian)

• “Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov spoke at a webinar as part of the series "The History and Current State of Russian Nuclear Policy and Public Diplomacy in the Nuclear Sphere," organized by the Center for Energy and Security with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund. Kommersant compiled a summary of the diplomat's key remarks,” Kommersant writes.
• “I see no practical possibility for a professional dialogue between Russia and the United States on nuclear nonproliferation issues. The chances for cooperation in this area are currently very slim,” Ryabkov said. “We must ensure that Washington abandons the extremely hostile anti-Russian course of the previous US administration.”
• “Russia will not allow itself to be drawn into an arms race with Washington,” he said.
• “The viability of Russia's proposal for a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) will only be ensured if Washington shows reciprocity,” Ryabkov said. “If the US rejects Moscow's proposal for the New START Treaty, there will be a total vacuum and a growing nuclear threat in the area of ​​nuclear potential limitations, but Russia will cope, and its security will be guaranteed.”
• However, “Russia does not see any possibility of resuming the exchange of information with the United States within the framework of the New START Treaty,” according to Ryabkov.
• “The prospects for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) to enter into force are not in sight due to the US position,” Ryabkov said.
• Additionally, “NATO's hostile policy could lead to a head-on collision between nuclear states,” according to Ryabkov.

“The Supreme Commander-in-Chief conducted strategic nuclear forces exercise,” Kremlin.ru, 10.22.25.

• “Under the direction of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, the strategic nuclear forces conducted an exercise involving their land, sea, and air components. The exercise involved live launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles,” according to the Kremlin.
• “From the Plesetsk state test cosmodrome, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile was launched, impacting at the Kura test site in Kamchatka. Simultaneously, the Bryansk strategic nuclear missile submarine launched a Sineva ballistic missile from the Barents Sea. Tu-95MS long-range aircraft also participated, launching a volley of air-launched cruise missiles. The National Defence Control Centre commanded and controlled all these live launches,” according to the Kremlin.

“The Consequences of Tactical Nuclear Weapons Use,” Andrew Facini and Lily Boland, Nolan Center (Council on Strategic Risks), October 2025. 

• The authors warn that global strategic stability is deteriorating as multiple nuclear states—including the US, Russia, and China—reinvigorate interest in tactical nuclear weapons (TNW), and alliances question existing deterrence commitments, particularly amid the war in Ukraine and instability in Asia and the Middle East.
• The report defines TNW as low-yield, theater-range weapons often outside arms control, noting their mobility, dual-use capability, and potential for rapid deployment make them difficult to track and especially destabilizing.
• Contrary to arguments portraying TNW as “manageable” or “limited,” the authors show that any detonation, regardless of yield, would cause wide-ranging humanitarian disaster, trigger political shocks endangering alliances and escalation control, and increase the risk of further nuclear use.
• They stress that normalizing TNW use would deeply erode the global non-use norm, lower the nuclear threshold, and sharply worsen crisis unpredictability; the effects would not be limited to the battlefield and could rapidly spiral.
• Recommendations include reaffirming the global taboo against any nuclear use, practicing risk-reduction measures (like increased transparency and restraint in dual-capable deployments), ensuring joint exercises and wargames account for unchecked escalation, and emphasizing that military “utility” is irrelevant compared to the catastrophic political and humanitarian consequences of even a single TNW detonation.

“When Nuclear Weapons Return to Belarus: Evolving Concepts in Russian Escalation Strategy,” Gabriela Iveliz Rosa-Hernandez, Decker Eveleth and Paul Schwartz, CNA, October 2025.

• “The deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus indicates that the following changes to Russian escalation strategy, posture, and behavior have already taken place or are currently underway:”
  • “The deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus, combined with changes in Russian theoretical writings, indicates an increased willingness (and a perceived need) by Russian thinkers to respond concretely to adversary actions in Russia’s near abroad and Eastern Europe, including use of demonstration exercises and strikes.”
  • “The forward deployment of a survivable set of nuclear weapons in Belarus is intended to complicate Western efforts to intervene in Belarusian affairs while making it harder to intercept inbound Belarusian missiles, thereby enhancing their deterrent effects.”
  • “Renewed Russian reliance on nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) represents a reversal of recent trends in Russia toward increased dependence on conventional versus nuclear forces.”
• “The deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus also has important implications for European security and Russia’s escalation management strategy more generally:”
  • “The deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus alters the balance in Eastern Europe, making it more difficult for NATO to defend against Russian military strikes during future crises or conflicts. These systems are deployable at such short distances that NATO will have very little reaction time if they are launched preemptively against Eastern Europe.”
  • “The growing alignment between Russia and Belarus, including the incorporation of Belarus into Russia’s nuclear umbrella, could well lead to additional deployments of both conventional and nuclear weapons (such as the Oreshnik) to Belarus.”
  • “Changes to Russia’s escalation strategy and its theoretical system of conflict typologies, including new types such as proxy war, could lead Russian strategists to alter the menu of escalatory options available to Russian leaders during future crises.”
  • “Although a high degree of continuity remains in Russia’s strategy for escalation management, the strategy is clearly evolving. Russia is embracing new forms of escalation management not seen since the Cold War, including new measures to enhance the credibility of its nuclear deterrence capabilities.”

“Inside the Kennedy School’s long fight to prevent nuclear catastrophe,” James F. Smith, Harvard Kennedy School, Fall 2025.

• Even as the smoke and ash still wafted from the World Trade Center ruins in lower Manhattan in the days and weeks after the al-Qaida attacks in 2001, counter-terrorism specialists in the United States rushed to ask what form terror might take next… One fear loomed above the others: that terrorists could get their hands on enough fissile material to make their own crude nuclear bombs—and threaten whole cities with devastation.
• Researchers at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs had already spent years weighing the potential threats and trying to raise that alarm. The 9/11 attacks galvanized policymakers to listen.
• That work took shape, and through the resulting Global Threat Reduction Initiative, governments locked down or removed more than four tons of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, ensuring that those deadly materials could never be weaponized. Many countries switched their medical and other nonmilitary facilities to use safer low-enriched uranium that could not be used in bombs. The United States alone spent as much as $500 million a year on this work over more than a decade. In 2016, President Obama applauded the progress: “By working together, our nations have made it harder for terrorists to get their hands on nuclear material. We have measurably reduced the risk.”
• That was just one of the many ways that Kennedy School scholars have helped prevent nuclear catastrophe. Meghan O’Sullivan, the Belfer Center’s current director, says, “Our scholars and practitioners have shaped treaties, secured stockpiles, and trained generations of leaders. This work is as urgent today as at any point in the last eighty years.”
• And now, with renewed urgency, these Kennedy School experts are taking on fresh initiatives on core themes such as nonproliferation and nuclear deterrence. They are responding to fast-evolving new dangers from Russia and its war on Ukraine, Pakistan and India, Iran, and North Korea; and increasingly they are focusing on the world’s third nuclear weapons superpower, China.
• “The curtain is rising on another era in which these will be much livelier questions, and there’s all the more need for places that actually do this work,” says Graham Allison, the founding dean of the modern Kennedy School and former director of the Belfer Center, who has been a renowned policy analyst on nuclear security since the 1970s. “Avoiding nuclear war is a necessary condition for pursuing any other objective,” he says. “This is not a problem to be solved, but a situation to be managed. And as technologies and geopolitics change, each generation has to manage it. Helping clarify that challenge and connecting with governments to meet it has been one of the bright red lines running through the Belfer Center and the Kennedy School.” Russia Matters has documented significant changes in Russian nuclear doctrine since the escalation of its war against Ukraine in February of 2022. The evolution of Russian thinking on legitimate first-use of nuclear weapons has given new urgency to the Kennedy School’s ongoing efforts to grow expert communities and inform policymakers capable of averting first or any use of nuclear weapons, and to discourage proliferation of nuclear weapons technology beyond the nine states currently in possession of thermonuclear weapons.

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “Foundations of a new NATO nuclear strategy,” Karl-Heinz Kamp, German Council of Foreign Affairs (DGAP), 10.22.25. (In German)

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

"Russians' surrender to Ukrainian robot marks further transformation of war," Siobhán O'Grady and Serhii Korolchuk, Washington Post, 10.21.25. 

• O'Grady and Korolchuk report that Russian soldiers surrendered to a Ukrainian explosive-laden land drone in June, marking the first time Ukraine took a position and prisoners of war using such a device.
• The operation, carried out by the Third Assault Brigade in Kharkiv region, retook a strategic position and “preserved Ukrainian soldiers’ lives,” demonstrating how “drones are changing modern warfare on Ukraine’s battlefields—first in the sky and now on the ground.”
• The $1,500 land drone was used after repeated failed human assaults; “Ukraine is designing [land] drones to fill roles that officials say will reduce human casualties and preserve the country’s limited manpower,” the authors write.
• Frontline commanders say such robots “are quickly reshaping the war,” taking over dangerous tasks and allowing for more rapid, cost-effective, and safer attacks—“‘the days in which I’m counting operations in human lives are done for me,’” said one commander.
• O'Grady and Korolchuk conclude the incident is emblematic of Ukraine’s transformation into a “testing lab for the future of modern conflict,” showing that “the task was over before it even started”—the Russians surrendered to the drone, eliminating the need for a risky infantry assault.

Energy exports from CIS:

“The Return of the Energy Weapon: An Old Tool Creating New Dangers,” Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2025.

• “Following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia inflicted enormous economic pain on Europe by slashing its natural gas deliveries to the continent and sparking an energy crisis with global reverberations,” according to the authors.
• “Starting in the 1980s, despite Europe’s growing dependence on Soviet—and later Russian—gas, policymakers and buyers became more confident that competitive markets and mutual dependence would shield the continent from geopolitical vulnerability. Indeed, for much of the Cold War, many leaders perceived the energy trade between western Europe and the Soviet Union as a moderating influence on the larger geopolitical rivalry,” the authors write.
• Looking ahead, “[a]s economic relations became more globalized and energy markets became more interconnected, exporters largely set aside the energy weapon. Certainly, there were notable exceptions, as when Russia cut off gas exports to Ukraine in 2006 and 2009,” the authors write.
• “When Russia cut off most of its pipeline gas exports to Europe in 2022 … European countries were able to cushion the loss by securing supplies of globally traded LNG, albeit at much higher prices. Nonetheless, shifting dynamics in global gas markets suggest that new dangers may lie ahead. In the coming years, supplies will be more concentrated among a handful of producers, even if Russia’s plan to triple its LNG export capacity by 2030 does not materialize,” the authors warn.
• “The global minerals supply is also dominated by a few other countries, such as Indonesia for nickel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo for cobalt, and Russia for enriched uranium,” the authors write.

“Will America’s new sanctions on Russian oil force a peace deal?” The Economist, 10.23.25, 

• The article details Trump’s imposition of sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil—Russia’s top two oil producers—marking “his first serious economic barrage against Russia since returning to the White House,” designed “to degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy.”
• The new U.S. sanctions threaten to cut off from the U.S. financial system any bank handling purchases of Rosneft and Lukoil oil, deterring buyers in “China and India, which together snap up most of Russia’s oil.” Several major refiners in both countries “said that they would suspend imports of Russian oil,” at least temporarily.
• The Economist notes this “marks a shift” from Biden-era caution, with the U.S. now willing to see “those volumes decline, perhaps because the world is facing an oil glut,” signaling “more penalties could follow.”
• The piece stresses the patchiness of the sanctions’ impact: “most of Russia’s seaborne barrels are usually bought by smaller, private refineries, which do not need access to dollars and so are mostly immune from American sanctions,” and Indian imports may continue via “third- and even fourth-party traders.”
• Nevertheless, the measures “will cause serious friction”—forcing costly and time-consuming redirection of oil and increased caution, especially as British and European sanctions bite into the shadow fleet and sanction-evading banks.
• The Economist concludes that real, lasting damage to Russia’s oil exports would require “a quid pro quo to Mr. Modi, or…sanctions on a clutch of Indian or Chinese refiners and banks.” A full Indian boycott, one analyst notes, would truly “hurt Russia” but would raise world oil prices at least $10–15/barrel—a political cost that might test Trump’s desperation for a Ukraine peace deal.

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “US finally finds a good way to hit Russian oil,” Yawen Chen, Reuters, 10.23.25.
• “Trump sanctions Russian oil: What does it mean?” Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko, The Bell, 10.25.25.
• “How Europe Is Still Fueling Russia’s War Machine,” Ilan Berman, The National Interest, 10.22.25.

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“Putin’s mesmeric sway on Trump,” Edward Luce, Financial Times, 6.25.25, 

• Luce argues that Vladimir Putin is now betting he can secure at the negotiating table with a Trump-led US what he failed to achieve militarily in Ukraine, citing Trump’s pressuring of Zelenskyy to cede territory and his refusal to continue unconditional US military aid.
• He describes recent Oval Office encounters as examples of Trump’s impatience and public admonishment of Zelenskyy, contrasting Trump’s treatment of Ukraine’s leader with his accommodating approach to Putin, including a second summit hosted by Viktor Orbán
• Despite Trump’s claims of global peacemaking and insistence that “you don’t have the cards,” Luce notes that Zelenskyy retains leverage—such as increasing European support and Ukraine’s expanded attacks on Russian infrastructure.
• The article highlights Russia’s heavy losses (with 100,000 Russian troops killed in 2025 alone, per The Economist) and Moscow’s limited battlefield gains, leading to “grey zone” operations that may reflect both Putin’s weakness and his need to avoid conscription.
• Luce concludes that, regardless of speculation about why Trump is so favorable toward Putin, the important fact is that Putin has fewer advantages in Ukraine than Trump assumes—except, crucially, Trump’s willingness to pressure Ukraine to settle on Russia’s terms.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“How to get ahead in wartime Russia: The old elite are fretting as a new cast of characters soars to the top,” Kate de Pury, The Economist, 10.24.25. 

• “Today, nearly four years into a war that Russia is still failing to win, society editors are struggling to fill their pages. The elite have become reclusive and fearful,” according de Pury. “Until they know who’s in, who’s out and who might be informing on them, they limit contact to trusted associates. ‘Members of the elite are not talking to each other about important topics, or networking without the president,’ said Mikhail Komin, a political scientist. ‘This is too dangerous.’”
• “Until recently, entrance to—and survival within—the elite was governed by predictable rules. … The war in Ukraine has shaken up this system. Today Putin values one thing above all else in people: the ability to help him win the war. He put the old elites on notice in February 2024. ‘The true, real elite is all those who serve Russia, workers and warriors, reliable, proven, worthy people who have proven their loyalty to Russia in action,’ he declared in a speech to the Federal Assembly,” de Pury writes.
• “Adding to the elites’ sense of paranoia is the fact that the man on whom their fortunes depend has become increasingly inaccessible. ‘All decisions are taken by Putin alone,’ said one Kremlin insider. ‘No one has his ear.’ Senior politicians, advisers and businessmen do what they think he wants—but it’s often a gamble,” according to de Pury.
• “Rule one: relatives can now get big jobs … Rule two: zealots are no longer held at arm’s length … Rule three: it’s the war, stupid,” de Pury writes.

See these link for notable commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “Four scenarios after the war,” Dmitry Nekrasov, The Moscow Times, 10.20.25. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian.)
• Review Essay: “Putins All the Way Down: How Russia Was Remade,” Joshua Yaffa, Foreign Affairs. November/December 2025.

Defense and aerospace:

•  See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:

• No significant developments.

   

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s external policies, including  relations with “far abroad” countries:

“3 Takeaways From Vietnam’s Drift Toward Russia and Away From America,” Damien Cave, The New York Times, 10.27.25.

• “Vietnam and Russia have reinvigorated their military and political relationship. A New York Times investigation — relying on documents from a Russian defense supplier and interviews with officials from Vietnam, the United States and other countries — has identified a string of Russian military purchases by Vietnam … Together with high-level meetings and public records, the transactions highlight not just Vietnam’s shifting geopolitics after a period of warming relations with the U.S. under President Biden, but also Russia’s brazen attempt to prove — in China’s neighborhood — that it’s still a major power,” Cave writes.
• Three takeaways:
  • “Vietnam is secretly buying arms from Russia.”
  • “Third-party intermediaries were used to hide payments.”
  • “Trump is alienating Vietnamese officials.”

See this link for notable commentary/analysis on this subject:

• “Russia-Pakistan Defense Cooperation: Between Optics and Reality,” Aleksei Zakharov, Observer Research Foundation, 10.21.25.

Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

• No significant developments.

The cutoff for reports summarized in this product was 10:00 am Eastern time on the day this digest was distributed. Unless otherwise indicated, all summaries above are direct quotations. 

*Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute a RM editorial policy.

Slider photo by the Russian Defense Ministry shared under a Creative Commons license.